Video

If my last post “3 Ways to Add Video to your Content Marketing Mix” did its job, you’ve already decided that your organisation must start using video to engage your audiences. It helps generate new leads and nurture the ones you have; and it’s measurable, so you know whether your video content is working.

But how do you get started? I’ve seen businesses large and small stall their efforts before they even got off the ground simply because they didn’t know what the first step should be in building a video marketing strategy.

Let’s remove the guesswork from the equation and take a look at what you should consider as you embark on this important and fruitful journey. The rewards are so worth the investment that you don’t want to let uncertainty get in the way.

1. Product. What stories do you want to tell (not sell)?
For most organisations, there’s no shortage of potential video content. Think about your audience and what you want them to know about you.

If there’s only one rule to stick by – stay away from sounding too sales-y. If consumers feel they are watching a sales pitch, they will probably leave immediately.

A good first video is an explainer about what your company does and who you are. Then you’ll want to create videos for every step of the marketing funnel. It’s said that buyers do more than half their product research independent of vendors, so you’ll want to provide videos for every step of that journey.

Interviews with thought leaders and customers can inspire audiences and quickly build trust in not only what you do but also why you do it. And as buyers engage directly with your sales team, personalised videos can help bring the human element back into the digital selling process.

2. Price. Everyone worries about budget.
Every organisation is trying to do more with less. However, you don’t have to spend tens of thousands to hire a dedicated video team.

Ideally, you’ll produce enough content for different stages of the customer journey and release a new video every couple of weeks. That may sound excessive, but you can dedicate the right resources without breaking the bank.

If you can only invest in one dedicated hire, a videographer is a good place to start. A strong videographer can shoot and edit all of your footage and produce at least one short video per week from about $1,200.

Quality is important, but so is authenticity. Your viewers will be more impressed by your smart, funny and helpful videos than whether the lighting is just right.

3. Place. Where people can view your content?
First and foremost identify the key platforms for your video distribution plan. The best strategy is to use multiple channels: your website, YouTube, Facebook, and e-newsletters to reach targeted audiences. And always explore new channels for your video marketing efforts.

YouTube is great because it performs well in Google search results. Plus, it’s free. But you sacrifice control. YouTube could refer your viewer to unrelated or, worse, competitive content. Make your phrases are specific; you want to use your keywords in your title, tags and descriptions.

Example of key-wording for our client Corcorz.

Facebook’s biggest strength is their community. They know the ins and outs their community, and work on ‘interest choice’, which means Facebook targets interest-based content to the community. Create video content that is tailored to fit your dedicated fan base and give them something to look forward to and respond to, rather than video content that is meant for a general audience.

4. Promotion. Make the first and last 10seconds count.
Did you know that 20% of your viewers will close your video after 10 seconds or less? Your video needs to be brief and too the point. Use your headline and video description to inform viewers what to expect.

And if your viewer to the finish line, reward them with a call-to-action. This can be visiting your site, signing up for a newsletter, leaving a comment, or offering to take up a special promotion. If you have their attention, now is the time to take advantage of it.
As mentioned in my previous post, with interactive video, you do not have to wait to the end of the video to engage with your audience.

5. People. Not just Products.
Product explanations are important, but they don’t always make the most compelling stories. Interview members of the C-suite to put a human face on the company.

Involve customers by featuring their success stories. Let your partners talk about their businesses and why they work with you.

6. Process. Keep Videos Short.
As any filmmaker can tell you, editing is one of the toughest steps. All that content you shot is great. Everything your company does is amazing. You couldn’t possibly do it justice in one minute.

Unfortunately, viewers have short attention spans so you have to keep it short, especially in the beginning. As you build your video library and measure viewership, you’ll start to see where there is demand for longer in-depth videos.

7. Performance. Prioritise Measurements & Analytics.
Measuring performance is the only way to know whether your videos are successful. Don’t settle for vanity metrics such as the number of views. That won’t lead to more leads and deals.

Collect data on how your videos are watched and how viewers engage with them. Check the duration of views, repeat views and drop-off rates. That data helps you know whether your videos are working.

Want to chat about how AM Multimedia can help you with your video marketing strategy? Great! Contact ann@annmegalla.com

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Did you know the average daily video views on Facebook alone are now 8 billion?(source).
That’s a staggering number of eyeballs glued to the visual content, and this has a major impact on video content marketing, social media, and online behaviour. At AM Multimedia, we take a closer look at 2016 video trends and share some useful tips on how we integrate video into our client’s marketing mix.

2016 is well an truly the year of video as marketers leverage small screens to reach consumers as video has become a powerful tool for brands looking to communicate more easily to their customers. In fact 52% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the type of content wit the best ROI and by next year 74% of all internet traffic will be video (source).

You do not have to be a large company to use video. Small businesses can increase lead generation, improve customer engagement, and build greater brand awareness to the right customers, in the right context, with the right content.

Video Micro-Moments Encourage Engagements on Social Media

Video micro-moments are what users are looking for to answer basic questions about products, services, processes, or events. Adding video into a social media marketing plan can transform the way your customers, and potential customers, understand your product.

64% of consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it (source). Video micro-moments is an easy and affordable way to define your brand’s purpose, give your users content to answer their product questions, and help your potential customers find your product through the purchase journey.

Video to Boost Email Open Rates

While email is still one of the top marketing resources for businesses, it can be hard to make your messages stand out, let alone get click-thru once someone has opened your email. However, using video, marketers can increase open rates and get in contact with the right people with the following strategy:

Using the word “video” in an email subject line boosts open rates by 19%, click-through rates by 65% and reduces unsubscribes by 26% (source).

Make sure videos aren’t too long. Decision-makers have limited time and you’re lucky if you’ve managed to convince them to open your email in the first place.

Interactive Video to drive sales

Shoppers who view video are 1.81X more likely to purchase than non-viewers(source). So why not harness the opportunity to make a sale from the video itself?

The difference between interactive video with versus a passive video is the ability to connect with real people at any point in the video’s timeline with touchable screens.

Most interactive videos start with YouTube, but businesses are starting to realise that YouTube will not be enough to capture the need for interactivity within videos. Businesses will have to move their videos to the private sector for a complete interactive video solution. To know more just ask ann@annmegalla.com

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A thrilling day filming conversation with iconic film director & visual artist David Lynch at the launch of his exhibition ‘Between Two Worlds’ at Queensland Gallery of Modern Art. For nearly 50 years, Lynch’s innovative, influential and distinctive artistic output has been integral to his overall creative vision. Developed closely with Lynch, the exhibition includes over 200 works illustrating the artist’s wide-ranging oeuvre – drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, mixed media, music, film and video. A must See.

David Lynch – Between Two Worlds – Press Conference March 19th, 2015megalla

A fun project filming some of the best bartenders in the Brisbane 4101 precinct. Experimenting with film to market to millennials – throwing quirk with individuality into the mix. Cocktails need to reflect a unique personality, that one should aspire to taste.

The West End Magazine, Movers & Shakers Video December 9th, 2014megalla

Launching Jungle Love Festival @ the Motor Room in Brisbane’s West End on Saturday 2nd August 2014. Just a taster of the vibe to be expected at the festival in November. Video Specs: Shot on Cannon 650D, 17-55mm F2.8 lens, Edelkrone Slider Plus.

In the eastern neighborhood of Dora in Beirut, a place with too many shades of grey for our own good health, there lives a splash of colour in the form of a slight-fragile artist from Jordan, Rafik Majzoub.

Now in his 40s, Majzoub’s tale begins in the early ‘90s post-war Lebanon, where a naïve 19 year old college drop-out is looking for his place a world that is also grasping its new found freedom. Little did the self-taught artist know that his paintings and illustrations would illuminate the dark & murky corners of an embattled soul – not just of himself but of a lost generation.

In a unique interactive web documentary, we dissect the he anatomy of this cult-like figure, fleshing out Majzoub’s compulsive persona, coupled with the twisted & tormented mentality of post-war Lebanon and “Raw” artistic style such as that of Brooklyn subway artist turned gallery darling Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Majzoub’s artistic expression however stands alone when integrating personal, public and political themes, cutting through any false façade to expose the imperfections of life.

By taking the chances he wanted, speaking his mind and creating artworks that no one before him had ever done in the Middle East, Majzoub rouses a mobilising sentiment amongst Beirut’s underground culture, causing a rift throughout the arts establishment, and a name to be reckoned with among contemporary Lebanese artists.

And unlike Basquait, Majzoub lives to tell us the story; taking you on a personal tour through 20 years of his works, giving you a rare insight into the originality of his artistic process and life journey. He describes the near-fatal car accident at age three that set the course of his life. Dropping out of design school in his hometown of Amman and moving to the embattled city of Hamra, West Beirut struggling to earn his keep as a self-taught artist.

We taste Majzoub’s first fame as a truth-intoxicating, whisk-drinking, bad-boy artist the establishment will find hard to swallow, yet hard to ignore. The Outsider’s subsequent death defying drinking habits and conflict with loved-ones leaves Majzoub with little else than a shadow of his former self in rehab and a sketchbook filled with rants, embarrassing digressions, drawings and scribbles that in a sane world should never see the light of day.

Beyond the whiskey mania, we delve into a sobering, deeper state of mind, an interior labyrinth, where Mazjoub’s caricatured portrait paintings and illustrations are a metamorphosis of himself, charged with his phobias, rejections – the enemy inside.

The outpourings of Majzoub’s personal story, imagination, and imagery are of the kind that should be viewed while listening to the hallow voices of Tom Waits and Nick Cave. With disarming honesty, and a voice that is intimately his own, Rafik Majzoub brings us the essential life story to date, frank, fearless and true.

Today, in Majzoub’s studio-home we find a screw-like figure, a recluse, buried in his chair hunched over his sketchbook; still perplexed in a labyrinth of his own neuroses, charting the feelings and events of his life. He undergoes a self-examination without concession, tenderness or false modesty, trying to get to the bottom of the very same question that’s on our mind “whoreally is Rafik Majzoub?”

STORY EXPERIENCE

This is an online biography-exhibition created with Rafik Majzoub to explore the breadth of his works over the course of 20 years.

Artwork is presented in an online “gallery” space made up by a series of short-films narrated by Majzoub incorporating media fragments. These include archive painted artworks & illustrations, photography, press articles, reviews, essays, eye-witness accounts. Visitors are encouraged to piece together their own personal view of the work, the context it was created in, and its lasting impact.

The interactive gallery is laid out for visitors to examine and contribute to an important part of Middle Eastern art history, giving fresh insights into the art movement of early 1990s in Lebanon and beyond.

SOCIAL ENGAGEMENT

With your contribution, you can enhance the story-experience by adding more fragments, links and areas of inquiry by re-tracing real locations, places, events and linking people that were part of Majzoub’s world and the arts movement of the time.

Visitors Blog area will be integrated into the main site wherenew work is encouraged to be added weekly and users are encouraged to contribute to an open forum to discuss such as: A. Rafik Majzoub’s art and themes around public memory and art making; B. What does it mean to be an artist in the Arab world now at a time when threats of violence, manipulative politics, and devaluation of values is invasive throughout the region? C. Discuss and debate the constitution of Outsider Art in the 21st Century.

The project team and curator also regularly post and are available to answer any specific questions.

HOW YOU CAN HELP

I am looking for partnership to explore the unique possibilities that the web can offer to documentary creators in re-imagining storytelling. I believe that the ethos of the web – collaboration, constant learning, and iteration — offers a fundamentally new way of producing documentary.

You can support this emerging field in a number of ways:

Project Support: I am looking for support from people with idoc producing experience to mentor & collaborate the over-all project in best practices, sharing their experiences, their challenges and victories. Narrative design, social media, crowdfunding and marketing implications that follows.

Web Designer / Code Sharing: The explosive growth of the web owes itself to the ability of others see and share how the web is put together from a designer’s and coder’s point-of-view. We not only learn how to create original new work but are given a shortcut to creating new work by building on that of our peers.

Production Funding: The documentary world is changing as the role of broadcasters shift and audience’s attention is fractured. New methods of supporting the art of documentary must exist on the web if this fledgling genre is to thrive. I welcome production funding through our online portal Kickstarter, grants, festival and lab opportunities.

The power of the web continues to break new ground in documentary film.

An article in Creative Review July 2012 Straight To Vimeo took my eye, so much so, I delve deeper to learn how the web can act as a facilitator for documentary film production and presentation. I viewed several films mentioned in the article to get a sense of what the filmmaker was trying to achieve when crafting their story.

I have embedded some of these films below and include a short summary of the relevant issues affecting or challenging traditional documentary production for online.

In summary, the article explores new ways producers are making and showing documentary films with digital media technology. Harnessing high-def equipment and high-speed editing and publishing tools for little cost, filmmakers are investing more time polishing their storytelling craft:

“We’re entering a period of high romanticism where you’ll get more really emotional pieces on film and not necessarily factual; it’s a style reaction” observes Adam Curtis of The Guardian (p.34)

Also, the article discusses how the internet has become an integral part of the film making process. From announcing the project, research & producing it, to funding, releasing and distributing the final film all happened via the web.

“The web can act as a facilitator, a way to bring attention to a particular cause, even fund an entire film project” Gary Hustwit (p.35)

London’s Pilgrim Films has raised awareness of issues of marginalized communities across the globe including Vimeo documentary winner for 2012 Amar, which follows a day in the life of a 14 year-old boy in the city of Jamshedpur, India. “As his routine is not unlike the fate of silent millions who lead lives of quiet drudgery in a daily battle for survival. If it makes people stop and think for a moment about their own lives, and how they choose to use their time, then that‘s all I can hope for” says filmmaker Andrew Hilton.

In Keith Ehrilich’s (USA) Made By Hand series, considers how something was made, who made it, and where it was made and under what conditions. Making films about the production process under threat from the convenience of modern technology appeals both to the online viewer and the filmmaker, using their skills inherent to traditional forms of production.

So does this mean the documentary viewing experience is better off viewed on the small-screen?

I still believe the cinema experience of watching films on a large screen, sitting in a dark space, away from distraction, remains my favoured experience. However, the web effect, for documentaries is its enabling well crafted films about niche subjects to connect directly with their audience, finding it’s roots firmly in the internet and removed from the traditional models of distribution via cinema and television networks.

In putting your shorts on Vimeo, and having them go out to blogs and other online media outlets, the number of views can quickly get up to the hundreds of thousands. I’m not even sure why TV networks exist anymore, to be honest. A film can reach more people via the web, both from a funding and a viewership perspective.

What do you think? Is television still the ideal platform for documentary?